Abstract
Many studies of unconscious processing involve comparing a performance measure (e.g., some assessment of perception or memory) with an awareness measure (such as a verbal report or a forced-choice response) taken either concurrently or separately. Unconscious processing is inferred when above-chance performance is combined with null awareness. Often, however, aggregate awareness is better than chance, and data analysis therefore employs a form of extreme group analysis focusing post hoc on participants, trials, or items where awareness is absent or at chance. The pitfalls of this analytic approach are described with particular reference to recent research on implicit learning and subliminal perception. Because of regression to the mean, the approach can mislead researchers into erroneous conclusions concerning unconscious influences on behavior. Recommendations are made about future use of post hoc selection in research on unconscious cognition.
Highlights
MotivationThe skew is even greater in Sklar et al.’s Experiment 7, where of 30 participants included in the analysis, only 7 scored below chance for awareness and 20 scored above
Unless it can be shown that the regression artifact is insufficient, the results reported in these studies fall short of demonstrating unconscious mental processing
Participants (n = 25) were excluded either if their awareness score was greater than chance by a binomial test (n = 21) or if they explicitly reported awareness of the primes (n = 4). b Simulation of the results shown in Panel A
Summary
The skew is even greater in Sklar et al.’s Experiment 7, where of 30 participants included in the analysis, only 7 scored below chance for awareness and 20 scored above This is a significant skew (p < .01), indicating that at least on this categorical measure, the sample supposedly showing unconscious priming performed slightly but significantly above chance on the awareness test. In Sklar et al.’s (2012) Experiment 6, mean priming was 15 ms in unaware participants, compared to an overall group mean of 11 ms In neither of these cases is the difference statistically significant, but they do, violate the predicted ordering and must, if regression is the only process operating, be attributed to sampling error. Future studies, employing sufficiently large samples to permit high-powered tests of the relative ordering of performance scores in aware and unaware subgroups, will be of considerable interest
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